Framing how people, tasks, and technology fit within a broader social and organizational context means considering how these social issues broaden the scope of design, putting things into the context of the big picture. Suppose you're designing a Web-based group calendaring system. You will need to know who has an online calendar. You will also ask how groups decide to have meetings. Does a manager decide, or is it a consensus process? These are all organizational questions that will help you design the interface to best meet the needs of your customer.

It is also valuable to understand the flow of work through an organization. Say you were building a new Web-based programming tool. Many enlightened designers might consider just watching programmers and how they work. Although this is a good first step, it actually leaves quite a bit out. We would also want to understand how the programmers interact with quality assurance engineers, designers, technical writers, and marketers. When do these interactions occur? What kinds of things happen during these interactions? Answers to these questions could critically influence your design.

The growing importance of online communities provides another reason to look at social and organizational issues. Before the Web, the concept of online communities was limited to dial-up bulletin board systems, newsgroups, and e-mail lists. The Web has expanded on these early outposts and proliferated the idea that groups tied together by shared interests or by common values can find a place together in cyberspace. Paying close attention to social and organizational factors can help you see how a Web site will explicitly support a specific group and build a community, cementing a longer-term relationship with customers.

Usually the organizational issues will be about the customer's organization, but sometimes it might be useful to look into organizational issues of the client. The client might have high-level goals for the Web site that are different from the high-level goals or tasks that you found to be important to customers. Resolving these differences up front might be the difference between success and failure of the project.

We have described what it means to understand the elements of every design: people, tasks, technology, and social issues and last but not least, customer's experience. Here we describe specific techniques that you can use to gain this understanding. Techniques such as task and customer analysis, observations, interviews, surveys, focus groups, and Web site evaluations help you characterize target customers and their needs. Some of these techniques are good for qualitative information, others for quantitative. The key is to use a mixture of techniques to get a more complete picture of who your customers are and what they need.

The word need here is important. One of the major problems with traditional software engineering methodologies is that they have focused on what clients say they want. The difference between what clients ask for and what customers need has led to many project failures in the past. Customers themselves cannot easily express what they need. The methods we present here focus on finding out what these needs are.

Customers are good at using a Web site and being able to say that it is something they do not need.

One of the problems you will repeatedly face is finding your target customers, and getting them to help out. Are they too busy? Perhaps you can buy their time by offering T-shirts, coffee mugs, or gift certificates. Are they still too busy? See if there is an alternative but similar audience. For example, medical doctors are often too occupied to take surveys or to participate in Web site evaluations, but first-year medical students might help out instead. Although students may not be the exact target customers, they are a pretty good approximation.

What if you have no idea who your potential customers are? This is where traditional market research techniques come to bear. Running focus groups and surveys, by telephone or online, with different types of potential customers, can help your team focus on the kinds of people who will be attracted to your Web site. This type of research should be conducted before you start designing the site.

Run a pilot test before showing your site to potential customers. Have some friends first try out your survey, focus group, or Web site evaluation to work out any kinks in the wording or procedure. Analyze the pilot test data to make sure that the data you're collecting is the data you want. This will help minimize the problems you will encounter when you collect and analyze information for real.

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